Yes, there are those people who seem to be blessed and win at everything without hardly trying. In my world I’ve always had to fight to accomplish anything, since I didn’t grow up in a world with all the advantages that so many others take for granted.

Most of what I learned had to be done the hard way, since we didn’t have parents who really taught us how to do much of anything other than just to survive and exist. The message I eventually got was that nothing I could ever do would make them happy so it was easier to just fail, rather than ever trying to take the chances that most kids do.

For me it was easier to just get used to failing, so the concept of success and happiness is foreign to me. I’m now trying to defeat a lifetime of failure to try to at least succeed in being happy, or at least comfortable in my own skin.

Comfortable in my own skin works for me too Randy. Yes, sadly success doesn’t always teach as about what it means not to succeed; particularly if we always think we are going to succeed.

There are those who continually succeed, whatever they turn their hand to and you’re right; but I believe that as long as we follow the universal path and succeed with gracefulness, be tolerant of others and live with compassion, it’s okay.

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. If we’re happy in ourselves, we’d be happy no matter whether we succeeded or not. I just think it’s important to understand what it means to succeed in the same way we understand what it means not to.

That way, we’d learn about succeeding and losing together; not just want it means to succeed. So important. We must know what it feels like to experience both.

Success gives a feeling of distinction, but it can leave you poor if you let reality slip away from you. Which is why I think success must be accurately defined before it becomes vulgar; we’ve seen many examples of that.